Recent Articles

AP Photo/Evan Vucci Then-Chief Strategist Steve Bannon listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting at the White House in January 2017. W hen you think about it, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump have a lot in common. Both are reckless, impulsive, bombastic, narcissistic, demagogic. Both are among the world’s great bullshitters. But one of them is president of the United States and the other isn’t. Thus, it was only a matter of time before Bannon would make himself persona non grata with Trump. Surprisingly, Bannon’s contemptuous comments to me, back in August, were enough to help get him fired from the White House, but not sufficient to cause a rupture with Trump. The two continued to speak regularly, Bannon later told me (unless that was also so much BS). Bannon’s latest comments crossed a line. They were, in Michael Kinsley’s famous definition of a gaffe, a blunder not because they were false but because they were true. They really didn’t tell us, and the rest of...

AP Photo/Steve Helber, File Then-candidate for the Virigina House of Delegates Danica Roem canvassing in Manassas This article appears in the Winter 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . T he Democrats’ stunning success in the November 7, 2017, Virginia state elections, and more recently, Democrat Doug Jones's election in Alabama, portends a great blue wave in 2018. Or does it? The good news is that dozens of new groups mobilized thousands of volunteers and candidates, many of whom were new to politics. With a lackluster and centrist gubernatorial candidate in Ralph Northam, Virginia also produced a rare case of coattails in reverse. The down-ticket campaigns increased turnout, which improved the margin in the governor’s race. Most of the new groups that contributed to the Virginia wins have been created only since Trump’s election in 2016. They range from groups devoted to candidate recruitment and training for state and local races, such as Run for Something...

AP Photo/Evan Vucci Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, right, applauds as President Donald Trump hugs Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as he speaks during an event on the South Lawn of the White House This article originally appeared at The Huffington Post. Subscribe here . Y ou’ve probably read that the European Union, after years of trying to duck the plain reality of Poland and Hungary ceasing to be democracies, has taken the first step towards denying Poland a vote in the European Commission. The EU’s basic treaty requires its members first and foremost to be democracies. Here’s the backstory. Since Poland’s Law and Justice Party took power in 2015, the Polish ultra-nationalist leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has felt stymied by the independent judiciary. In July 2017, the government drafted legislation to give Kaczynski control of the courts. Other EU leaders warned of dire consequences, and Poland’s President, Andrzej Duda, a close ally of the government, surprised all by...

AP Photo/Alex Brandon President Donald Trump waves as he leaves after speaking about tax reform in the Grand Foyer of the White House W ith the economy producing rising growth rates and falling unemployment, will Donald Trump and the Republican tax bill be able to take political credit for the boom of 2017-2018? Maybe not. For starters, the boom was already roaring along in 2015 and 2016, before Trump took office, as the post-recession recovery finally kicked in. The year 2015 showed the strongest GDP growth in more than a decade, and 2016 was not far behind. Unemployment was already down to 4.7 percent when Trump took office and its further drop to 4.1 is entirely the result of policies established before Trump, under one Barack Obama. Even with these low rates of joblessness, profound structural changes in the labor market fail to translate low unemployment into significant gains in earnings or career prospects. The rise of gig employment, the bashing of trade unions, the...

Just in case we needed one more thumb on the scale of today’s Alabama Senate election, how about this:

The Alabama Supreme Court last night inserted itself to block a lower court ruling requiring election officials to preserve ballots, in case of challenges to voter suppression or even a just plain recount. In Alabama, about 85 percent of ballots are recorded digitally, and the lower ruling required the preservation of digital images.

Ironically, Roy Moore, the Republican candidate, served twice as chief justice, and was removed. The Supreme Court, in issuing a stay blocking the lower court ruling, gave no explanation, but sided with a brief filed by Secretary of State John Merrill. Which contended that state officials had no authority to direct local election officials to preserve ballots.

Such preservation, of course is standard procedure. The state Supreme Court adds one more bit of mischief to anticipated abuses of ID requirements and other forms of voter suppression. If Democrat Doug Jones does win, he will need to win by a theft-proof margin.